


autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place

by archersandsunsets, rosegardeninwinter



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mentions of Taylor Swift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27824935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archersandsunsets/pseuds/archersandsunsets, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosegardeninwinter/pseuds/rosegardeninwinter
Summary: "What did you see in him anyway?""Oh, I don't know." She waves a hand absently. "Blond hair. Blue eyes.""So Taylor Swift walks into this coffee shop, and you'd date her?"In which Katniss Everdeen has a bad date, and her best friend Peeta Mellark comes to the rescue.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 31
Kudos: 126





	autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JLaLa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JLaLa/gifts).



> about two months too late and sneaking under the wire as we ski on into Christmas, Reese and Cate present a little modern!Everlark, lifelong best friends, pumpkin patch and apple pie, Taylor Swift heavy, last autumn huzzah for @jlalafics, @seasonsofeverlark, and for all of you! enjoyyyyy!

"Hey."

His best friend's voice over the phone is tired and frustrated, but even without that, he knows something's wrong the minute her contact picture lights up his screen.

Katniss never calls. It's always text with her.

"What's up?"

"Can you come pick me up? My date — uh — really didn't work out. The idiot drove me here though so I'm stranded."

"Sure," Peeta says, already hurrying to find his car keys. "Where are you?"

"Seeder's," she replies. "Little coffee shop on Eleventh."

"I'm on my way."

"I'll be the girl moping over her second huge pumpkin latte."

"It might be hard to distinguish you from all the others, but I'll try my best," he jokes before they hang up. He tries to take her huff at his humor as a good sign.

Fifteen minutes later, he spots her through the window as he parks in front of the sleepy coffee shop, looking withdrawn and very un-Katniss-like without her signature braid and boots. She looks up and meets his eyes when the bell above the door signals his arrival.

"Hey." He crosses the tiny dining area to her booth, sliding in across from her.

“Hey," she echoes, then slides a steaming mug across the table to him. "I got you this. No sugar, just how you like it."

He reaches around the mug to take her hand and squeeze it. "What happened?"

Katniss sighs and slumps her head down on the table. Peeta grimaces.

“You really were banking on this guy, huh?" he says sympathetically.

"Cato?" Katniss's head shoots up. "No — no! God. No. We just kept running into each other at the park on Elm where I like to go jogging in the morning. He asked if I wanted to nab breakfast with him and I was like 'sure why not?' And then we actually sit down and talk for the first time ... and let's just say we should have kept our conversations to 'hi!' 'have a nice rest of your day!'" She rubs her face. "I hate people."

"Ouch."

"You're not people," she's quick to clarify.

"Well, it sounds like you dodged a bullet."

"Oh, you think?"

He laughs gently and tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "It's okay, Katniss. I'm here now."

"My hero."

There's a beat as his hand slowly lowers from her face. Her mascara laden lashes blink, and Peeta watches their fingers idly tangle over the table.

"Idiot," he mumbles, then shakes his head.

"He was an idiot," she agrees.

"Huh?"

"Cato. Was an idiot."

"Oh yeah. Yeah." He coughs and regains his composure quickly. "What did you see in him anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know." She waves a hand absently. "Blond hair. Blue eyes."

"So Taylor Swift walks into this coffee shop, and you'd date her?"

Katniss rolls her eyes. "I've never been into singers."

"Such discrimination."

"Only because you think her most recent album is genuine folk music."

"I will hear no slander of 'peace' in this cafe, Everdeen."

Katniss shakes her head out of amusement, then settles her gaze on her latte.

"I just ... don't get it," she muses flatly.

"I think it's all about vulnerability and feeling like — "

"Not the song, Peeta."

"Oh." He frowns. "Why's this got you so down? You're not really the 'looking for a boyfriend' type."

"I know. It's not that. It's that — you and Prim are always saying I can work on being more personable — and this is why I don't. But — "

Peeta's thumb rubs a circle against the side of her palm. "Some people aren't worth being personable to. That's not what Prim and I mean."

"Then what? What do you mean?"

"I won't speak for Prim but ... like, you know when you do singing lessons at the school? Or when you get really excited to show customers how to take care of their gardens?" Katniss works at a local nursery and garden store and he's never seen someone so eager to explain the maintenance of a Japanese maple. "When you let your walls down a little, you're the happiest I've ever seen you and I love it when you're happy. That's all I mean."

"Oh," Katniss says. "Okay." She doesn't seem wholly convinced.

"Hey, look at me." She does. "Is that all that's bothering you?"

Katniss pulls her hand out of his and shakes her head. "I'm fine."

He knows she's not.

"Tell you what — I'll get a to-go cup for this and we can go for a drive. Or something."

Katniss sighs. Nods. "Yeah, okay let's do that." She gathers her things (wallet, water bottle, phone) in the bag she uses when she goes running as he snags a paper cup for his coffee.

"Wanna go to Blackberry Ridge?" he asks as they climb into his car. The local berry farm has always been a favorite spot of the residents of Seamtown. "They've got their pumpkin patch by now and we could pick up a pie or something."

Katniss brightens a little. "Sure," she says. "That sounds nice."

It's a gray day, but not rainy, and Peeta hands his best friend the aux cord to "play some 'real' folk music" while they drive.

She rolls her eyes but takes him at his word and puts on an acoustic love song as they drive to the more rural part of town. She puts her feet up on the dash and closes her eyes, humming along under her breath, frown softening.

At some point, the shuffle actually does bring them to _folklore_ , and he waits for Katniss to groan and change it, but she doesn’t. She taps her foot absently in tune. He decides to reward her compromise.

"Thoughts on picking up some vanilla ice cream on the way back? I realize it's not even ten in the morning but — what?"

She's looking at him in a way that makes his heart thud hard against his ribs, though he's not sure why. He has to keep his foot from mimicking the movement and slamming on the brakes as he forces himself to look forward again.

"I think... you're my favorite," she says. He feels her stare leave him, hears her echo the lyrics playing from the radio in a low hum. "'Cause it lives in me... No, I could never give you peace..."

“I thought you didn’t like this album,” he says.

“I said it wasn’t real folk music, and it’s not,” she says, “but I like you, so.”

She shrugs like her actions need no further explanation. Peeta couldn't feel that is further from the truth. She was an enigma, sometimes. A girl of so few words and even less sentiments, except for those she loved.

He doesn't say anything, instead listening to her quiet harmonizing with the song that accompanies her confession of him being her "favorite," whatever that means.

"Your integrity makes me seem small, you paint dreamscapes on the wall..."

He watches her out of the corner of his eye when she hits the second part of the second verse as he gets onto the highway.

If it was him in the car alone, or even with her, if he was less confused, he would have belted out the part about "wasting your honor" loud, not caring if he was off key, but she barely sings it at all. It comes out short, spoken, and she stops.

"It kinda does hit, though," she laughs quietly.

“It does," he replies. "It... touches parts of you that you didn't know... you had, or felt. Fears, hopes, the reality of tragedy."

"Spoken like a true Swiftie, Mellark," Katniss quips beside him. He laughs.

"No, but seriously."

"I know." Her voice goes soft against the second chorus. "It's like, how you never think you're good enough for someone, but you never... tell them that. How you could live a hundred lifetimes, and never deserve them."

"Right," he says, but as the lyrics lament between them, over and over, her words sink in.

He shouldn't pry. They've known each other since kindergarten. If there was something going on in her love life she'd tell him, no question. He distinctly remembers the irrational hatred he felt for Darius Keeper for a solid five months their freshman year when Katniss confided in him she thought the senior was handsome. There's no secrets kept between them.

Well, except for one. That he's been in love with her since eighth grade. He can't tell her that. It would ruin everything. But it may have ruined everything anyway.

His knuckles flex on the steering wheel as he turns down the gravel road to Blackberry Ridge's makeshift parking lot.

"Are you ... uh ... saying that in like, as like a philosophical point or ... like you have personal experience? Feeling like that."

_God knows he does._

She tenses in her seat, but doesn't say anything. Then, as he rounds an incomplete row in his search for a spot, she shrugs.

"I don't know. Maybe a bit of both," she admits. She sighs. "We don't have to... I don't want to talk about it. I just want to... sit on some pumpkins, get this pie and ice cream and go home, okay?"

"Okay," Peeta says. He parks the car and looks at her. She won't make eye contact with him. "If that's what you want."

"That's what I want."

She shuffles awkwardly in the gravel by the driver's side door as he locks the car and makes sure he has his wallet.

"Pumpkins or pie first?" He asks, as upbeat as he can manage with this weird mood hanging over them as low as the clouds in the autumn sky.

"Don't care," she shrugs, hands planted firmly in her jacket pockets.

"I think pie." She squirms when he puts his arm around her and pinions her smaller frame to his side, but she doesn't manage to escape. "I think you need some food in you."

They make their way inside the main building, which is a repurposed wood farmhouse, cozy and smelling a lot like the home goods stores they’ve spent literal hours in at the mall, cooking up grand designs for a nonexistent living room or kitchen.

“Take a look,” he tells her, nodding at the display case of pies. “Your choice. My treat.”

She feathers her fingers lightly over the glass for a moment, flitting undecidedly back and forth between strawberry rhubarb and Dutch apple. At last, she settles on apple, and asks the young woman working the counter if they can have some plastic forks to go with it. The girl obliges, and as they wait for her to box up their dessert, Katniss takes a deep inhale of the aroma of the seasonal spices, her body seeming to relax into his side. He smiles.

“There’s my girl. Always won back over with sweets,” he teases, and presses a kiss to the crown of her head.

Katniss cringes like he’s hurt her. “Don’t,” she says, her voice catching. “Don’t do that.”

“I — ” he flounders. What does she mean? That‘s just part of their dynamic. It has been ever since they became best friends — and yeah, it’s starting to feel like an actual punch to the gut every time his lips brush her cheek or her hair, but he’s never shown it. And she’s never minded.

 _Never yours,_ his mind taunts, the voice eerily like his mother in her darker moments. His mother, who barely wanted him and couldn't believe for a second a girl like Katniss wanted anything but to take advantage of him. _This is how you lose her._

"Here you go," the girl at the counter says as she hands them the box. Katniss reaches for it, ducking out of Peeta’s side and turning swiftly on her heel for the door.

Peeta shoots an apologetic smile towards the cashier and grabs the forks and the receipt, then follows his best friend.

"Katniss," he says outside, but she's gone, far ahead of him. She didn't wait for him.

“Katniss!” he calls, louder, but not so much as to cause a scene, as she makes her way down the dirt track, weaving between families with bundled toddlers in red wagons, and out into the farm’s pumpkin patch.

“Hey!” He catches up to her. “Are you planning on eating that pie with your hands? You forgot these.” He holds out the plastic forks.

She takes the forks without looking at him. “Let’s find somewhere to sit down.”

“Okay.” He walks by her in silence to where some hay bales have been set up as makeshift benches, with a view of the muddy pumpkin patch, full of orange and yellow-green gourds. Families mingle and children call to their parents they've “found the best ones!”

Katniss sets the pie box on her knees. Her expression is more flat and her demeanor more dim than when he found her in the coffee shop.

He doesn’t think even eating her feelings will help.

Still, she slides a finger underneath the flap and opens the box, revealing a golden-crusted pie, glazed with sprinklings of cinnamon and caramel atop the braided pattern of the dough and apple filling. She stabs her fork directly in the middle and takes a bite, then passes the box to him. A breeze blows over them, and Katniss seems to curl further inward.

Peeta pokes around the edge of the pie, finding a bit with a lot of crust — the best part, if you’ve got a good baker, in his opinion. He gets his bite and passes the box back, threading his fingers together. They don’t speak. Katniss gets another gooey bite of the middle and, fork dangling from her mouth, hands over the box. His fork hovers for a minute, then he closes the box and sets it down beside him.

“Katniss,” he says, tone careful even if his words aren’t, “Come on. Can you cut the bullshit? What’s wrong?”

“I wish you didn’t know me,” she says, eyes fixed on the farmland in front of them, tapping her fork on her jeans.

He feels like she’s cut his heart out. “What?”

“I wish,” — her voice is agitated and her plastic fork is clicking against her knee as she bounces it up and down — “You know me. You get me. And it really, really freaking sucks to realize that there’s someone in my life who understands me and I’m never going to be good enough for — ugh. This is so stupid.”

"It's not stupid," Peeta says. He sets the pie aside and moves to face her. Wishing he could take her hands again like he did in the coffee shop. "Talk to me. Come on, I'm your — "

"Best friend?" she finishes for him. Her voice rises in a pinched warble, like the idea hurts her.

“I — yeah.”

Katniss looks at her boots, a sad smile twisting her face.

"I'm sure Taylor's got a song for this too," she says wryly.

"For what, Katniss?" he asks. He's straining for her answer, not wanting to put words in her mouth, not willing to hope.

She holds out a hand. "Can I see your phone?"

"Sure." He hands it over and she unlocks it, opens his Spotify again and scrolls through.

When the synth pop instrumental starts to play, Peeta doesn't recognize the title of the song. But the voice is unmistakably Taylor Swift's as she starts to sing.

"One look, dark room, meant just for you... Time moved, too fast, you play it back..."

The lyrics flow against the rhythm of the music, the tone low and conspiratorial, almost confessional. Peeta's heart speeds to match the pace of the whooshing beat. He catches Katniss's eye.

"Just listen," she mouths, and he does.

"You can hear it in the silence ... you can feel it on the way home ..."

 _If only she knew._ Nights with her sleeping beside him in the passenger seat of his car because they had an impulse to go get fast food or star gaze. Nudging her awake in the driveway of her apartment and wishing, wishing he could kiss her goodbye.

"You are in love ..."

Yeah. He is. So in love.

He looks up at Katniss, who is watching him with an intense, almost plaintive expression.

"Katniss, I —"

"Listen," she says, whispers, almost.

"No, but, I have to tell you something."

"And you're interrupting me," she says, "while I'm telling you something. Just listen."

The second verse comes in patterned like the first, telling a modern love story that also feels so timeless. Of burnt toast and honesty.

_If only..._

"Katniss," he says. How did she choose the perfect song to explain his feelings? How did that explain why she felt like she wasn't —

Then Taylor Swift is singing about letting go of your fears and your ghosts, and it's enough. Enough to make him want to yell at her, tell her she's crazy for thinking that she's anything less. Enough to make him notice the strange, cracked open expression on Katniss's face as she begins to sing along.

"One night, he wakes, strange look on his face..." Her eyes meet his in bared admission, her greys hitting deep. "Pauses, then says..."

"'You're my best friend,'" he says, recalling the end of the line.

And it dawns on him.

The lyrics are still going, confessing what they've both left unsaid as they look at each other.

"Me?" It comes out almost appalled.

Katniss nods, bites her lip "Yeah."

"But — but how — but _I'm_ in love with _you_!" Like the two are mutually exclusive.

"Too bad, I said it first," she quips, and her face goes pink.

He sticks her with an amused smirk, and leans in.

"Can I?" he asks.

"What is that one song? ‘Drop all your stuff and kiss me on the street?’"

"Okay, yeah, no. Don't do Sparks Fly dirty like that, Everdeen."

And then he kisses her. Soft and sweet and tasting of apple cinnamon. And he feels her melt into him, warming him down to his toes in the cold air…

"So wait," he says, drawing back, and putting his hands on her shoulders, still reeling, "Wait, wait. Sorry, what just happened? You were like, annoyed at me five seconds ago and — did you seriously think you aren't good enough for me?"

Katniss covers her freshly kissed mouth with a hand. "I don't know ... yeah?"

"Katniss," he sighs, then grabs her into a hug, squeezing her tight, "you idiot. How could you think that? You're the most incredible person I've ever known. If anything, I'm not good enough for you."

"You're the idiot," she protests weakly over his shoulder. He kisses the side of her head.

"How about this? We love each other. We don't question if we're good enough. We finish this damn pie. And we're both idiots," Peeta suggests. "Better?"

"Better," she says, slumping against him and burying her nose against his shoulder. "Oh my God, you love me.”

“I love you. I mean, obviously. You knew that but like. Love love. You Belong With Me type love.”

“I love love you too. And oh my God we're so stupid. If I'd known it was just as simple as playing pop music at you ..."

"I would have done this back in eighth grade."

"Ha," Katniss crows weakly against his shoulder, "try third."

"And we were both young when I first saw you..." Peeta sings in an off-key impression.

Katniss snickers against his shoulder. "Shut up and pass that pie, Romeo."


End file.
